A British Pub Odyssey
The Campaign for Real Ale’s Good Beer Guide is often held up as the Bible of British pubgoing. Listing all of the public houses given the nod by each local chapter of CAMRA, it lists all of the best places around the country to find a decent pint (or several). Now in its 37th year, the current 2010 version features over 14,000 of them. Back in the day, there were fewer entries – the 1990 version, for example, had 700. Still too many to ever visit in a lifetime though? Well, not until Stuart Ashby came on the scene. A retired railway worker from West Sussex, Stuart’s love of the British pub led him to all 700, in a quest that took him only five years.
Clearly it helps to be retired, as he managed an average of three visits a week to knock off the total – even more remarkably he did the entire thing using public transport. Drinking a single pint in each, he finished the epic journey at his local, the Lamb in Yapton. I’ve been to several pubs from the Good Beer Guide (although I have no idea how many) – but it’s nowhere near the 17,000 Stuart estimates he’s visited since 1984. Only in Britain would someone painstakingly travel the length of the country to tick off the best part of a thousand visits to public houses – we really are a nation of pubgoers. Stuart is next off to North Wales, where he plans to visit 100 pubs in eight days…
